Sunday, March 1, 2015

Capacity Building

In XIMB there was a center called Cenderet. It was brain child of Fr. Bogaert, a Belgian father. Cenderet mostly did rural development work. They will do a lot of training programmes called Capacity Building. I was always a little confused by this. I always wondered if Capacity building is synonymous with training.

When IIIT started there were very few employees: 2 to be exact. I wondered what can two people do. In other words, I was asking the question what is the capacity of two employees:  the capacity for Institution building. I was wondering if capacity is proportional to the employee strength.

Yesterday, I was witness to the high mast lamps being hoisted and installed in the tennis courts. These lamps have been fabricated in-house in our tiny workshop. The procurement to fabrication to installation is being done by our own people. This is a unique capacity of the Institute which was built over a few years. This saves us a lot of money. But more than saving money, it shows a peripheral activity like the workshop can contribute so much towards the Institute Building.

We have built our own ERP for Administration, education delivery. That is a unique capacity.

We have done the project management of our construction. This is also a very unique capacity.

However, on several core fronts of the Institute, we either depend on others or do a shoddy job our selves. The capacity is sadly missing in these activities.

Capacity is what you can do with your own hands and what an organization can do with its own people. The capacity is both capability and willingness to go the extra mile. Often, one or the other is missing. I hope we develop more capacity in many aspects of our operations.